


Of Stalkers And Fangirls And Other Endangered Species

by Minnow_53



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Boys In Love, Fluffy Ending, M/M, Marauders Era (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:00:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25988602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minnow_53/pseuds/Minnow_53
Summary: Remus and Sirius just want to be alone, but various girls are watching them.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Kudos: 61





	Of Stalkers And Fangirls And Other Endangered Species

**Author's Note:**

> First published on LiveJournal 7/6/05. Thanks to Asterie for the beta.

Charms is the last lesson of the day, and Sirius has been flicking his wand to make caterpillars change into butterflies and back again, and wondering why they aren’t doing this in Transfiguration. Remus would know, but he doesn’t want to launch him on a long explanation. Besides, Remus is busy charming a stream of Red Admirals to fly through the open window and out into the weak March sunshine.

‘Hey, Moony, you’re supposed to be putting them back in their cocoons!’ James hisses, scandalised, as Sirius tries to stifle his laughter. Remus rounds up the last of his flock and sends them on their way, turning to James with his finger on his lips. ‘Shh. You don’t need to tell Flitwick. It can be our secret, okay?’

Remus is good at secrets, takes them in his stride. He’s so self-sufficient, with his prefect’s badge and his deceptively innocent face. Sirius, torn between amusement and arousal at the sight of Remus freeing the butterflies, hisses, ‘Transfiguration storeroom, afterwards, please?’ He knows that the most he will get is the faintest nod. He doesn’t mind, as long as it's a yes.

After the lesson, he makes sure he won’t lose sight of Remus, taking him by the wrist almost roughly, whispering, ‘Coming?’ and knowing Remus will smirk a tiny bit at the pun. Then, like Orpheus, he turns to make absolutely sure that Remus is following, at a discreet distance, of course. 

The storeroom is filled with neat piles of bats and caterpillars, loose and in cages, waiting to be reanimated for use in Transfiguration and Charms lessons. The two boys sink down behind the closed door. Their kisses are hungry and sloppy, open-mouthed and far from gentle, as if they were trying to devour each other, and they hold each other close, whispering incoherent instructions that get lost in the moment. 

Even in the throes of pleasure Remus is somehow inscrutable, closing his eyes so that Sirius can’t intrude on his personal space. No matter that it’s personal to him too: Remus makes it his own private little orgy of thrusts and sighs and moans.

Sirius stares up at the ceiling, which is draped with netting and hooks, to prevent the larger creatures from escaping if any accidental magic brings them to life. 

‘Hey, Moony,’ he says. ‘We’re meant to be doing this together, you know?’ He’s doesn't mind that much, really, because he knows Remus so well and the sex is so good, but he’s a bit annoyed too. 

But Remus makes up for it soon enough. Once the main intimacy of the moment has passed, he curls up against Sirius and rains kisses down his neck and over his face. ‘Sorry, Padfoot. It doesn’t mean anything. I just sometimes feel…uncomfortable.’ 

They leave the storeroom separately, made wiser by a previous encounter with a very suspicious Filch, who stared at their crushed robes almost insolently, or so Remus babbled afterwards; but Remus can be a bit paranoid.

As Sirius hurries down the stairs to the Great Hall, he thinks he sees a flutter of Gryffindor red and gold just behind him, out of the corner of his eye, but dismisses it. Maybe one of Remus’s butterflies has flown back into the castle.

Back in the common room, Lily Evans is deep in conversation with James. There’s a spate of excitement as the Gyffindors, who’ve been following the Potter/Evans soap opera for over a year, whisper and gossip about the sudden truce.

Sirius wants to nudge Remus and mutter, ‘Hey, what’s up with them?’ But he’s not sure Remus has even noticed, because he’s absorbed in drawing butterflies all over his Charms essay, which is due in tomorrow morning. Flitwick can be very strict with homework, and in fact he should be getting on with his too.

Instead, he keeps glancing over at James and Evans, because they seem to be looking at him and Remus a lot. He now hopes Remus _hasn’t_ noticed, because Evans is clearly talking about them, and if Remus finds out, he may not be so willing to kiss and touch and sleep with him. They're careful, or think they are, but Hogwarts isn’t exactly a haven of privacy.

He gets up, and, on the pretext of borrowing a quill, wanders across to where James and Evans are sitting. They see him – they _watch_ him – and stop talking abruptly.

When they’re all getting undressed later in the dorm, James blurts out, ‘Hey, Padfoot, Moony. Evans has been asking me some really weird questions about you guys.’

Sirius actually feels himself blushing, and hides his hot face in his shirt so James won’t realise. Remus asks, ‘Like what? Because the butterflies were my fault, actually, even if Sirius and I were working together.’

Now, James goes red in his turn, and mumbles, ‘Oh, nothing. She’s stupid. Well, she isn’t, but you know. Girls.’

When James and Peter are asleep, Remus creeps into Sirius’s bed, casts a silencing spell, and says, ‘D’you reckon Evans has found out?’ 

Sirius remembers the glimpse of a butterfly on the stairs: a butterfly girl, with hair the colour of a Red Admiral’s wings. He won’t tell Remus, though, or Remus will just worry. He won’t say, ‘I think she may have been spying on us, because she seems really interested in what we're doing.’ 

Instead, he grins at Remus, and says, ‘I don’t have the faintest, but she’s not here now, and we’ve got a charm going.’ They take the opportunity to make love properly, Sirius on top and pressing kisses on the back of Remus's neck, until they're both completely satisfied and curled round each other, finally falling asleep at dawn. 

*

They’re on their way to Care of Magical Creatures with the Hufflepuffs, and as they wander down to the Bestiary, Sirius lets his hand graze Remus’s neck for a second. Just a touch, but it’s enough to set him completely on fire, and he murmurs to Remus, mouth dry, ‘Don’t go back to the castle at lunchtime, okay?’ Remus smiles, almost imperceptibly, and, daring for him, leans slightly into Sirius’s hand.

A girl bumps into Sirius, says ‘Excuse me,’ quite loudly, and seems to linger beside him. Sirius glances at her briefly. He has the impression he’s seen her before, but can’t quite place her. She’s blonde, rather vapid, a typical Hufflepuff. Sirius forgets her instantly, moves a bit closer to Remus as they all crowd forward to examine the Knarls that Professor Kettleburn has tamed for their edification.

He obediently writes down the Knarl’s breeding habits, occasionally turns to James on his other side to whisper to him, all the time aware of Remus almost touching him, and thinking of how after the lesson they’ll sneak into the Forbidden Forest, just the outskirts, which aren’t that forbidden. Anyway, if something untoward crops up, Sirius can always transform and hold it at bay long enough for Remus to escape. 

He thinks of Evans again, though he’d prefer not to, because she and that best friend of hers, Zoe Smith, can hardly keep their eyes off him and Remus. Why can’t she mind her own business? He has visions of her watching them, and wonders how they’d appear to an outsider: Remus lying on his side with his legs curled up, his light hair tousled, and him behind Remus, his arms encircling him tightly… The image makes him shiver, but it’s his image, not Evans’s. She has no right to picture them together.

Of course, if she’s seen them in the dim Transfiguration storeroom, it would be very hard to tell what they were doing from a distance. She would simply assume they were lying really close, clutching each other and kissing. The kissing would make it rather obvious, of course. 

He hates it that Evans might know about them, and scowls at her. 

And once again there’s some tiresome Hufflepuff girl jostling him, pushing in between him and Remus. ‘Sorry, may I just…?’ He doesn’t know if it’s the same girl who bumped into him earlier.

It’s like a conspiracy, he thinks for a moment, exasperated. There’s Evans, still gaping, and the girl elbowing Remus out of the way – Remus seems bewildered rather than angry – now has a friend with her, a rather prettier girl, Sirius notes. The prettier one is looking hopefully at Remus, which makes Sirius’s blood boil. He pointedly pulls at Remus’s sleeve. ‘Hey, Lupin. We need to ask the professor about that extra coursework.’

Remus, who can always be relied on to play along and not start asking awkward questions, the way Peter or even James would, says, ‘Oh, yes.’ He smiles at the two girls as he squeezes past. Sirius notes that the prettier girl smiles back. He glares at her, hoping she'll register his irritation, and the other girl giggles.

After the lesson, while everyone else is at lunch, they lie under the trees, which are just starting to produce their first green leaves. They’re clinging to each other, still a bit shaky, damp with sweat, though it’s so cold they’ve spread their robes over themselves for warmth. 

Sirius says, ‘You know, I don’t only want you. I love you too.’

‘I do know,’ Remus says. ‘It’s just, I find it difficult…’

‘I can say it for both of us.’ Sirius pulls Remus even closer, and strokes his hair. ‘But next time, _look_ at me, won’t you?’

‘I’ll try.’

When they’re dressed again and making their way back to afternoon school, Sirius glances round nervously, but the only butterflies in sight are the tiny white ones flitting among the daisies.

*

‘Hello.’

Sirius turns to see that blonde Hufflepuff and her friend – he recognises the friend first - standing at the bottom of the stairs. He looks round to see who she’s talking to, before realising that it’s him. He panics for a minute. Is he supposed to know her? Is she among the girls he took out and groped half-heartedly, before realising he was in love with one of his best friends? He doesn’t think he’d have dated anybody so forgettable.

He says ‘Hello,’ back, noncommittally. Goodness knows what she wants, and he wishes she’d get lost. He’s waiting for Remus to come out of his lesson in the South Tower, and he doesn’t want those girls hanging round him. He smiles vaguely at them and moves away a bit, distancing himself. The girls stay put, though the plainer one fidgets, whispers something to the other one.

Remus comes bounding down the stairs, and Sirius immediately forgets everything else in the rush of pleasure and relief at seeing him. Silly, really; he’s with Remus almost the whole time, but still, he feels his face splitting nearly in half in a big grin.

‘So, Lupin, how was Arithmancy?’ he asks.

‘Pretty mathematical, Black,’ Remus says. ‘I made a seven into a fraction, though. It was cool. How was Potions?’

‘Boring.’ Sirius lowers his voice, moves closer. ‘I missed you, Moony.’

‘I missed _you_ , Padfoot. But I must have some lunch today. It’s the moon tomorrow, and I’m ravenous.’

Sirius is instantly all concern. ‘Moony, I’m sorry. You must eat properly.’

Remus isn’t really listening. ‘Hey, talking about eating, who’s that girl over there? She looks likes she wants to swallow you whole.’

Sirius reluctantly drags his eyes away from Remus, and glances over. It’s that same blonde Hufflepuff, of course. No doubt Evans and Smith are behind her, taking notes. He decides it’s best simply to ignore the lot of them. ‘C’mon, then, Moony, let’s go to lunch.’

At the Gryffindor table, Evans has switched places so she’s next to James. She’s obviously continuing yesterday’s conversation about him and Remus. Just as well James isn’t in their confidence, because he’d tell her everything, if he only could. 

She’s whispering, but Sirius, with his sharp ears, can make out, ‘…are you sure? But I’ve seen them…’

He’s glad Remus is oblivious, or apparently. But Remus is good at pretending. He may well be taking in every word he can, interpreting it roughly the same as Sirius, while he eats his roast chicken. He certainly isn’t chatting to Sirius the way he normally does.

Sirius looks across the table directly at James, doing his best to block Evans completely out of his field of vision. ‘Prongs, you wanted me to remind you to pick up your broomstick before training today.’

James drops his fork with a clatter and dives under the table to retrieve it. Sirius risks a glance at Remus, who is now frowning at his jam sponge, possibly because Peter’s taken all the custard. 

Come to think of it, Peter may be the best person to tell him about any rumours Evans has started. Sirius speaks to him a low voice after lunch, while Remus has nipped upstairs to get a book and James has disappeared to collect his broomstick.

Peter squirms, even more uncomfortable than usual. ‘I told Prongs it was rubbish,’ he says. ‘But Evans keeps on and on at him about it, so he’ll probably go on at you now.’ 

Sirius is glad to be forewarned before James confronts him again that afternoon, up in the common room at teatime. Remus is standing beside him, weighing the merits of lemon cake versus chocolate pie, but when James approaches he slips away, so fast that Sirius is left with a big piece of lemon cake in his hand, staring at the space where Remus was just a moment ago.

Fortunately, James is too preoccupied to notice. ‘I know Evans is off her trolley. But she was furious because I didn’t really… I promised her I’d at least ask again. She said she wasn’t talking about the butterflies. Anyway, it’s rubbish. I mean, you and Moony! Ridiculous. I pointed out to her that you’re both _blokes_ , but she just says how romantic it is, and so on. Really, I don’t know what to do about her.’

Sirius wishes Remus was there beside him, to bluff his way out of this. He swallows, wills himself to be cool.

‘Listen, Prongs, girls. They have these, uh, _moods_.’ In case it’s escaped James’s notice that he hasn’t been out with a girl for several months, he improvises, ‘I’ve been talking to this, er, Hufflepuff. She’s really cute. And she says they all dare each other to do these, um, _things_. Like she dared her friend to ask Moony out, which is good because the friend’s pretty, and he really fancies her. So, it’s just one of their games. Trust me.’

‘Oh, right. So you’re going out with this girl, are you?’ James asks.

‘Maybe. Not quite yet.’

James understands, he hopes, that negotiations are at a difficult stage, and doesn’t say more. Besides, they have to start on homework, because there’s a very tricky potion to write up, and it’s going to be dinnertime before they’ve finished.

He and Remus are being good this evening, because of Evans and those other girls, and also because of James. They sit next to each other at dinner, though, letting their thighs touch, and just the feeling of Remus near him is unbearably arousing. He wonders if he’ll risk Remus’s bed that night, and decides he’ll have to, or he’ll go mad.

But James is in one of his bossy moods: rather unfair, actually, because Remus is the prefect. ‘Right, it’s the full moon tomorrow. We should all get to bed early.’

Remus obediently slides into bed, closes his curtains with a flick of his wand. He doesn’t even say goodnight. Sirius gets into his own bed, where he actually goes to sleep almost immediately, and has complicated, fitful dreams about him and Remus, and those strange girls who seem to be everywhere.

*

They wake up to the sound of the rain on the windows. In the Great Hall, the enchanted ceiling will be overcast and grey. 

Sirius feels a bit grey too, this morning, but consoles himself by remembering that it’s brilliant running with the wolf in the rain, even if last time they all came back shivering, with runny noses, and Pomfrey made them drink double helpings of Pepper-Up Potion.

He dawdles over dressing. Remus is even slower, and as usual James and Peter are ready first and go downstairs. He and Remus snuggle on his bed for a while, and they'd both like to do more, but he knows it’s up to him to be a responsible boyfriend, or whatever he is, and make sure Remus eats plenty to prepare him for the evening. ‘You need a big breakfast,’ he says, holding out Remus’s robes for him, and Remus sulks, as he sometimes does just before the moon, and says, ‘I’d rather stay up here with you.’

‘Well, you can’t. We’ll try and sneak off at break.’

Remus cheers up, and bounds down to the Gryffindor table, where he drinks copious amounts of tea and eats seven slices of toast. Sirius notes that Evans and Smith are watching them again, and makes a point of sitting a bit less close to Remus than he wants to. Evans is actually smiling at them soppily, and Sirius is annoyed, but tries to calm himself by concentrating very hard on his own breakfast.

He doesn’t know how he muddles his way through Herbology: his magical starflowers end up mangled and sad, instead of bright and glowing. Remus is carefully hollowing out the soil in his flowerpots to place each plant in gently, and Evans, just for once, is getting on with her own work.

‘These flowers are very hard to grow, which is why they’re so rare,’ Professor Swinburne tells them.

Probably suitable for the very rare butterflies Remus released in Charms the other day, Sirius thinks, and admires Remus’s shining plants, with their smiling faces. He’d never manage to take such trouble over something so fiddly. 

The professor strolls round to check that the students aren’t doing too much damage. Fortunately, he doesn’t notice Sirius forcing the roots into a pot that’s patently too small. Instead, he calls everyone to see Peter’s fanciful arrangement of his flowers in a perfect circle, and gives him a bar of Honeydukes chocolate. Some of the Ravenclaws, who share the lesson with the Gryffindors, are a bit annoyed. It’s usually one of them that gets the coveted award.

At last, the professor dismisses the class, and Remus waits for Sirius outside the greenhouses. It’s still raining, but not very hard.

When the others are safely on their way back to the castle, Sirius says, ‘Let’s go to the Quidditch stands, shall we? Even the Slytherins aren’t going to practise in this weather.’

‘Especially the Slytherins,’ Remus says. When they’re a reasonable distance from the greenhouses, he takes Sirius’s hand and smiles up at him. ‘You’re a very patient dog, Padfoot.’

‘Wanna bet?’ Sirius pulls Remus to him, kissing him hungrily. ‘And I could say you’re being a very patient wolf too, Moony.’

Remus wriggles away. ‘You can’t imagine.’ He flings his arms round Sirius in a brief, fierce hug. ‘C’mon, let’s get down to the pitch, or we won’t have time to do anything.’

They make their way to the Quidditch stands, and spread their cloaks over a bench so they can sit down without getting too wet. Not that it matters: they know at least sixteen drying charms between them, though they tend to cancel each other out if used too randomly.

‘I can hardly wait,’ Sirius moans, and they kiss ravenously and sink down on to the bench. Remus pulls Sirius on top of him and he’s running the tip of his tongue over Sirius’s neck, and oh, God, it feels so wonderful... 

Neither of them notices that the rain is pelting down again as the world crawls back into focus.

‘We’ve missed History of Magic,’ Remus says after a while. ‘But we better go to Transfiguration.’

They get up and straighten their robes and start off back to school.

Sirius thinks, for some reason, of those two girls who seem to be stalking them, and almost at the same moment discerns a movement in the bushes behind them. He half turns and sees a flash of yellow, a Hufflepuff cloak.

How on earth have they known to come out here, to track the boys to the Quidditch pitch on a cold, wet morning? Sirius decides that the pretty girl must really fancy Remus. It doesn’t register that the other girl might actually fancy _him_ ; he’d be way out of her league.

‘What the hell?’ He raises his voice, mainly for effect, because he knows they’re there, and he’s in perfect control, spinning round, with his wand at the ready. 

The two Hufflepuffs emerge from the bushes, and they’re both gaping at him, faces bloodless, and then the plainer girl’s face seem to be crumpling in tears, and they’re running to the castle, stumbling over the wet grass.

‘Oh shit,’ he groans, and Remus is there, comforting, his arms round him. 

‘Aren’t those the girls who do Care of Magical Creatures with us? The blonde was ogling you on the stairs yesterday.’

‘She won’t be doing that again in a hurry.’ In spite of his anger, Sirius is a bit amused, actually, in a sadistic way, because at least they may get the message now and leave him and Remus alone.

Remus sees it differently. ‘Oh, no, Sirius, they’ll blab to all their friends and their Head of House.'

The Herbology teacher, Professor Swinburne, is also Head of Hufflepuff, and has disliked Sirius ever since the incident with the mandrakes in Second Year. It was actually James’s fault they were planted upside-down, but just as some teachers give higher marks to the more attractive children, Swinburne tends to dislike flashy good looks in his students. He’s a plain, thickset wizard himself.

‘I’ll have a word with them,’ Sirius says, steely. ‘After lunch.’

‘Pity it wasn’t Smith and Evans,’ Remus says. ‘They’d probably have asked us to start over so they could take pictures.’

They go back to the castle, and sit through Transfiguration without taking in much of Professor McGonagall’s impassioned speech about the many uses for a Diricawl. Remus and Sirius last saw the sample animal in its cage in the storeroom, glassy-eyed and so rigid that it seemed stuffed. Normally, they would both be interested to watch it coming to life, and go up to the library after school to find the appropriate reanimation spell. 

‘Muggles call them dodos, and believe they’re extinct,’ McGonagall says, cradling the creature tenderly in her arms like a rather unwieldy baby, ‘but the Wizarding world knows better, of course, and their feathers are highly prized for vanishing charms. If you split into pairs, I’ll hand out feathers, and I want you to make one object from your schoolbags disappear, then use the standard spell to bring it back again.'

Remus and Sirius, working together, have missed the part about ‘standard spell’, and try various Transfiguration methods instead, losing textbooks, parchments, quills and an actual schoolbag in the process. McGonagall gives Sirius an after-school detention, and remembers in time that Remus will have to wait a couple of days for his punishment. 

They hurtle down to lunch, making sure they get there in time not to miss a single soul passing through the door of the Great Hall, but the Hufflepuff girls are nowhere to be seen. ‘Probably scared,’ Sirius says, and Remus says, ‘Probably too busy rounding up all their friends to gossip to them.’

‘Don’t be stupid, Moony. All their friends are here, having lunch.’

Neither of them touches a thing; it’s rabbit stew today, which everyone hates anyway, but the house-elves insist on serving it at least once a month. Remus has a theory that they cull all the rabbits in Hogsmeade just before the full moon. The wolf may like to chase them, but the boy throws up if he tries to choke down even a sliver of the meat.

James and Peter are filling up on mashed potato, and Evans and Smith are still gawking, so in the end both boys abandon the meal altogether, and forgo their strawberry blancmange to go and hang around on the front lawn, too restless to sit down quietly. Normally, they’d take the opportunity to find a private place to snog, but not today.

*

The Hufflepuff girls finally turn up at dinner, to Sirius’s intense relief. He’s finished his detention: McGonagall took pity on him and cut it short when he managed to retrieve all the missing objects without help. He got to see Remus just before Pomfrey led him off to the Shack, and he and the others will be joining him later. But first he has to deal with the stalkers.

He watches them during the meal, the way they’ve been watching him, noting that now the plainer girl turns away, scarlet, and keeps her eyes on her plate. Halfway through dinner, she whispers something to the pretty friend, and they push their chairs back with a clatter. Sirius follows them out of the Great Hall.

‘Can we talk?’ he asks. He’s had to walk fast to catch up with them, as they scuttle like frightened animals away from his footsteps behind them. Serves them right, he thinks. Now they’ll know what it feels like.

He can’t tell, from their wary expressions, exactly what they want from him. He doesn’t want to have to explain, to tell them anything. It’s nothing to do with them, for a start. He sighs, and wishes he had one of those cigarettes that he sometimes sneaks in Hogsmeade, behind the pub or in the woods.

The girls are probably just as eager as he is to avoid going into details. The plainer one babbles out that she won’t say a thing, Hufflepuff honour, and the prettier one, who also seems a bit brighter, says, ‘We’re really sorry. We didn’t know. And we’re not going to tell a soul about it.’

‘Okay,’ he says, coldly. ‘But if you ever say _one word_ , I’ll jinx you to hell and back.’ 

The plainer girl shrinks away, but the other one, who may be brighter but doesn’t know when to shut up, asks, ‘Where’s Lupin?’

Sirius tries to look as blank as possible. He’s already revealed that particular secret once, and has no desire to do so again. ‘In the library, I suppose. Why?’

The girl has the grace to turn away then, suitably intimidated by his chilly tones. He gives the pair of them a curt nod and they scamper off again. He isn’t even bothered by them now. They’re harmless; they don’t matter any more than a couple of fleas would matter to Padfoot.

He goes back in to round up James and Peter, and they make their way to the Willow under the Invisibility Cloak.

It’s a wonderful night. Padfoot stays close to the wolf, and they play under the trees that are still dripping, though the rain stopped at sunset. In the morning, Sirius persuades James and Peter to go ahead to the castle. ‘I’ll hear Pomfrey in plenty of time. Take the Cloak.’ 

He lies down on the bed next to Remus, who’s sleeping peacefully, covered by a tatty blanket more suitable for the dog. There’s a tiny scratch on his nose, probably made by Padfoot’s claws rather than the wolf’s. Sirius puts out his tongue to lick it, and Remus stirs, opens his eyes and smiles.

‘Good morning.’

‘Good morning. You okay?’

‘Fine. It must have been a pretty active night, though. I feel like I’ve been running for miles.’

You have. We both have.’ Sirius draws Remus into a tight embrace. There are no stalkers, no Evans here to watch as they move together, breathless and gasping. Remus doesn’t close his eyes this morning, but looks steadfastly at Sirius, with such intensity that Sirius thinks _he_ might need to turn away for a moment.

As they lie close together, listening out for Pomfrey’s heavy footsteps, Remus asks, ‘Those girls. What happened?’

‘Oh, them. No problem. I’ve sorted them out. Not that they took much sorting. Two stupid, scared Hufflepuffs.’

His voice is hard with a derision he wasn’t aware he felt. Remus kisses him again, smoothes back his hair. ‘I’m glad. I thought they might fancy you.’

‘I think the pretty one fancied _you_ , actually.’

Remus laughs, because it’s unusual for the prettier girl not to fancy Sirius, and because he’s relieved another moon is over, and it’s spring, and the nights are getting shorter. Sirius laughs too, because he’s in love and he’s holding Remus tightly, and nothing and no-one is going to come between them. The Hufflepuff girls have been banished as effectively as if they’d disappeared in a flurry of Diricawl feathers. He and Remus can handle Lily Evans just as easily, if the need ever arises. 

It’s their secret, their game, and nobody else can play.

**End**


End file.
